“I need fire and earth and wind and waves as much as I need food. I’d go mad living in this wired-up, bricked-up, fenced-in concrete street if I didn’t dose myself with fire and weather and earth and sea. My soul would get pale and thin. I don’t want a pale, thin soul.”
Wilcock, Penelope. The Wounds of God. in The Hawk and the Dove Trilogy, Wheaton: Crossway, 2000, chapter 2, p. 174.
“How weary I am of being a writer. How necessary it is for monks to work in the fields, in the rain, in the sun, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spiritual directors and our novice-masters. They form our contemplation. They instill us with virtue. They make us as stable as the land we live in. You do not get that out of a typewriter.” (3 March 1951)
Merton, Thomas. The Sign of Jonas. San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1981, p. 321. (originally published 1953)
Comment: When you see how much Merton wrote over his shortened life, you can sort of wonder about snippets like this. He’s right, of course, that even prolific writers like himself need to get out away from the keyboard regularly and connect with creation. Also non-writers and non-prolific ones.
“The world becomes habitable as a world when its flood of appearances is sorted and cataloged.”
Griffiths, Paul J. Intellectual Appetite: a Theological Grammar. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009, p. 28.
Imagine for a moment the flood of appearances that overwhelm newborns. That’s what he’s talking about. But, of course, I like the reference to classifying and cataloging.
“Our goal is the renewal of the presently corrupt creation. This makes it clear that the route through the wilderness, the path of our pilgrimage, will involve two things in particular: renunciation on the one hand and rediscovery on the other.” (p. 190)
“The problem is that it is by no means clear what we are to renounce and what we are to rediscover. How can we say ‘No’ to things which seem so much part of life that to reject them appears to us as the rejection of part of God’s good creation? How can we say ‘Yes’ to things which many Christians have seen not as good and right but as dangerous and deluded? How can we (the same old question once more) avoid dualism on the one hand and paganism on the other?” (p. 191)
Wright, Tom. Simply Christian. London: SPCK, 2006.
Quote:
“So what might we take away from the document? I would suggest several things. First, Francis provides a way of engaging those who do not share our beliefs in a post-Christian world. Second, the document provides some helpful lines of direction toward a more robust theology of creation and its use within the church. Finally, Francis encourages us to expand our horizons and embrace a comprehensive vision of the world. He challenges the church to take a global perspective in which a practical commitment to human beings and the environment take priority over a commitment to nationalities, ideologies, economic theories, and politics.”
Charles P. Arand, “Tending Our Common Home: Reflections on Laudato Si’.” Concordia Journal Fall 2015, vol. 41, no. 4, page 308.
Note:
LCMS seminary prof Charles Arand highlights things that Lutherans can pick up from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’. I’m not sure, however, whether any Lutherans really have taken up the 2015 encyclical. I certainly don’t see a lot of Lutheran focus on the issues of creation care. We do talk a lot about “life issues” but I just can’t say that I’ve seen much that uses the phrase to include preservation and enrichment of all life on earth. And, yes, I’m talking about the scourge of climate change.
Note:
John Burroughs, certainly no Christian, notices that as we grow older, we naturally pull back from the noise of society and turn more toward things of lasting value. That is, we become more contemplative the more we mature. This reminded me of something I read recently in Falling Upwards a book by Richard Rohr where he talks about ways in which the spirituality of attentive Christians changes as we age.
Quote:
“The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and the wonder of the world. I hardly know which feeling leads, wonderment or admiration. After a man has passed the psalmist’s dead line of seventy years, as Dr. Holmes called it, if he is of a certain temperament, he becomes more and more detached from the noise and turmoil of the times in which he lives. The passing hubbub in the street attract him less and less; more and more he turns to the permanent, the fundamental, the everlasting. More and more he is impressed with life and nature themselves, and the beauty and grandeur of the voyage we are making on this planet. The burning questions and issues of the hour are for the new generations, in whom life also burns intensely.” (vol. 15, p. 1)
Source: Burroughs, John. “The Summit of Years” in Volume 15 of The Writings of John Burroughs. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.
Pathology: the Study of a Path 